Christmas Mourning - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Margaret Maron (ч. 3)

“Gallie kid?”

“Who is he, Sarah, and why didn’t Charlie want Malcolm to know what Mallory said?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t know any Gallie.”

Dwight pulled out Charlie’s phone. “Want me to play it for you again, Sarah? Refresh your memory?”

“No!” She pushed the phone away. “No.” Her voice trembled. “Please, no.”

“Then I’ll have to ask Malcolm,” he said implacably.

“No! Haven’t we been through enough? You don’t know what you’re messing with, Dwight. Do you want to wreck my whole life? Do you know how bad Charlie feels that he and Mallory were fighting when she died? Leave it alone, Dwight. Please. It’s none of your business!”

And with that she whirled and ran into the garage, pushing the automatic switch as she passed. A moment later the garage door closed smoothly and silently.

When Dwight walked into the squad room shortly after nine, there was an open box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts sitting atop one of the file cabinets and Mayleen was delicately licking sugar from her fingertips, but he shook his head when she pointed to the box. Mrs. Barefoot’s ham biscuit had been delicious and filling, but so salty that all he wanted at the moment was a big glass of water.

He set the phone on Mayleen’s desk and told her Charlie’s password while she looked for a napkin to clean her fingers. “He claims that the editing was accidental, but I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t matter, so don’t waste much time on it.”

“Why not, Major?” Dalton asked.

“I know we were all hoping that whatever he cut out of Mallory Johnson’s message would throw more light on her wreck, but I’m afraid it doesn’t. Not that I can tell. See what y’all think.”

He turned on the cell phone’s speaker and pulled up the relevant voice mail. Once again they heard “Silent Night” and Mallory Johnson’s voice.

He played it through a second time, but switched it off before they had to listen to Mallory’s dying moans.

“Who’s Gallie?” asked Dalton and McLamb together.

“Who knows? I called my mother on the way over here, but if he was ever a student at West Colleton, she’s not familiar with the name. She’s going to call some of the other principals. See if they have a kid named Gallie. I’m pretty sure Charlie and his mother know who this Gallie is, but they don’t want to discuss it. Mrs. Johnson says it’s none of our business, and unless you can suggest how it has any bearing on the wreck, I don’t think we should pursue it. Just make us a complete copy of Mallory’s message, Richards, and see if there’s anything else from that night that might be relevant. I told Charlie he could have his phone back at noon.”

“You say Avenger’s his password?” Richards asked.

“Yeah.” He turned to Denning and handed him the bag of trash. “This might not be relevant either, but my niece picked it up around the site early Friday morning. It’s trash from the Cotton Grove Bojangles’ and she says there’s a receipt taped to the box that’s time-stamped about thirty or forty minutes before Mallory crashed.”

Denning opened the bag, saw all the greasy papers, and beamed as if it were a stocking full of goodies. “I should be able to get some fine prints off this.”

He carried it into his makeshift lab, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and carefully itemized each item:

3 aluminum beer cans (Budweiser)

1 Bojangles’ box

4 greasy napkins

1 receipt for an 8-piece chicken box—time-stamped 9:45 p.m. December 16

1 muddy beer bottle (Pabst)

1 crumpled form letter notifying the recipient of a sale on tires

1 foam Hardee’s drink cup with plastic lid and straw

1 empty cigarette package (Marlboro)

2 red plastic straws

1 sheet of rain stained notebook paper covered with third grade math problems

Humming to himself, Denning took the paper with the fingerprints of Major Bryant’s niece and set to work.

A large map of the county covered half of a wall in the squad room, and after quickly making an electronic copy of Mallory’s message, Mayleen Richards eyed the distance from the Bojangles’ at the edge of Cotton Grove to the site of Mallory Johnson’s crash where the trash had been found. “That’s no more than a thirty-minute drive, Major. It could well have been tossed by the person whose headlights blinded her. If you’re eating chicken and littering at the same time, you might forget to dim your lights and you might swerve across the center line.”

“Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Richards,” he cautioned. “Might and did aren’t even kissing cousins. That trash could have been thrown out anytime between ten-something Tuesday night and six-thirty Friday morning when my niece picked it up.”

Mayleen Richards tossed her red head and reached for a folder. “I beg to differ with you, sir. Here’re the pictures the trooper took that night and the next morning.”

The pictures were in black and white. One of the night pictures, taken from the front of Mallory’s car and looking back, showed faint blurs of white on the far shoulder. An almost identical shot the next morning showed trash in the same location. Again, though, even if they blew it up, the distance was probably too great to be able to say for certain that it was a Bojangles’ box.

“Any good attorney would call it wishful thinking.”

She grinned. “Well, it is Christmas and we’ve all been good, haven’t we?”

He laughed and went on into his office, but Mayleen noticed that he took the disc and the player with him.

She sat down at her desk, opened Charlie Barefoot’s cell phone, and when prompted for a password, typed in “Avenger.”

CHAPTER 28

The more he thought, the more perplexed he was.

—A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Next day was Christmas Eve and I almost overslept. Cal wasn’t all that eager to get up either. By the time we left the house, we were both cranky with each other.

“Try to take a nap today, if you can,” I told him, wishing I could crawl in for one myself. “We’ll be up again late tonight and a full day tomorrow.”

He yawned and nodded, although I knew that once he was with Mary Pat and Jake, the excitement and anticipation would kick in.

When I dropped him off at Kate’s, Erin Gladstone, the live-in nanny, told me that Kate had already planned some downtime for the children that afternoon. Erin planned to head out after lunch to spend Christmas with some friends in Durham, so I handed her a small gift and a fairly large check and wished her lots of merriment.

Although we didn’t get started much before 9:30, court was due to recess for the holiday at noon. Happily, I had heard everything on my docket by 11:17, so when Dwight sent word for me to stop by his office when I was finished, I wished everyone a merry Christmas, slung my robe over my arm, and headed downstairs.

With the search warrant I had signed for him that morning, he had picked up Charlie Barefoot’s phone and Mayleen Richards had transferred the uncensored message to a DVD disc.

Dwight was disappointed with it, though, and when we were in his office with the door closed, he said, “It doesn’t give us any more information about the wreck itself, but she was sure as hell upset about something, and that, combined with the other stuff in her system, probably had her too distracted to pay attention to the road. You picked up on something we missed the first time around, let’s see if you can make more sense out of this than I can.”

A DVD player from the squad room now sat on his desk and he mashed a button and once again I was listening to Mallory Johnson’s angry young voice over the bells of “Silent Night.”

I had to take several deep breaths after listening to Mallory die again. “Who’s Gallie What’s-his-face?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Didn’t you ask Charlie?”

“Of course I did. He says he never met the kid, and yet I get the feeling there’s something there that’s important.”

He told me how he had gone by the Johnson house, how Sarah had given him all of Mallory’s presents to donate to the clerk of court’s gift drive, and how she, too, had first denied knowing any Gallie and then told him it was none of his business.

“Mallory said this Gallie’s mother was mad at him for being late,” I mused. “Why would a kid getting home late ruin Christmas for everybody? Does he go to West Colleton?”

“I spoke to Mama and she said she’d ask around, but she’s never heard of a student called Gallie at her school.”

“I guess you don’t want to ask Malcolm yet?”

“Not after Sarah’s reaction. She doesn’t want him to know and the poor guy’s hurting bad enough without adding to it. Whatever’s going on in that family, I guess she’s right. If it doesn’t have any bearing on the wreck, then it really isn’t any of our business, is it?”

“Every family has its secrets,” I said lightly, hoping he would never learn all the facts behind my first appointment to the bench. “I don’t suppose you want to have lunch?”

“No, I’ll grab a bowl of chili across the street. You off to pick up Cal now?”

“After I run a couple of errands. Don’t forget that Kate and Rob are expecting us at six.”

He gave me an absentminded kiss good-bye and I went out to the parking lot, with Mallory’s words running through my head. Calling him “Gallie What’s-his-face” made it sound as if she didn’t know him. A kid from another high school? On the other hand, something about his mother being mad at him because he didn’t come straight home was ringing a distant bell. Unfortunately, the bell was so distant that it faded from my mind as I tossed my robe in the car and ran through the mental list of things that still needed doing before tomorrow.

Most of Dwight’s family would gather at Kate and Rob’s tonight for dinner and to exchange gifts. Tomorrow was when my family would get together.

Kate and Rob are very dear. I’ve come to love them almost like blood siblings. They are thoughtful and kind and Dwight and I are eternally grateful that Cal can go there after school rather than day care. The evening would be warm and loving and in perfect Christmas-card taste.

And the get-together with my rowdy bunch?

Not so much.

I was smiling as I drove out of the parking lot, but when I got to the intersection where I should have turned left to go home, I spotted Reid Stephenson, my cousin and former law partner, taking the steps to our old office two at a time. Now why did I look at Reid and think Gallie?

The light changed from red to green. Instead of turning left, I drove through the intersection and parked in front of Lee and Stephenson, Attorneys at Law. Maybe Reid would like to buy me lunch.

CHAPTER 29

“Do they really catch deer that way? How vile.”

—“The Running of the Deer,” Reginald Hall

MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 24

Deputy Mayleen Richards tapped on Dwight’s open door shortly after one and said, “Charlie Barefoot’s here for his phone. Okay if we give it back to him?”

“Find anything else relevant to our investigation?”

“No, sir.”

“Then let me have it.” He took the cell phone and walked down to the front desk where the boy waited. As persuasively as he could, he said, “I told you, son, that your dad and I played ball together. Are you sure there’s not something more you can tell me about your sister’s death?”

Charlie met his gaze without blinking. “You played ball with Malcolm, too,” he said bitterly; and without waiting for Dwight to reply, he took the phone and left.

Puzzled, Dwight went back to his office. Was Charlie somehow implying that Malcolm was involved with Mallory’s death? When everyone said he idolized his daughter? Would have lain down in a mud puddle so that she could walk across without dirtying her shoes?

It didn’t make sense.

The squad room was semi-deserted by now. Everyone expendable had taken off for the holiday. Richards had straightened her desk and already had her jacket on. He knew that she would be spending tomorrow with Mike Diaz’s extended family because her own family members were still hostile to their relationship.

“Okay if I leave now?” she asked.

“Denning gone yet?”

“I don’t think so. I know he wanted to run some fingerprints through IAFIS—”

Before she could finish the sentence, Percy Denning hurried in, excitement and triumph gleaming in his eyes. “Guess what, ya’ll? I ran the prints off the beer cans and the chicken box and got a hit. Jason Wentworth! So then I checked our own records and the other multiple prints are his brother Matt’s! So that bright light the Johnson girl was screaming about?”

“Faison’s halogen flashlight!” Mayleen exclaimed. “Of course! They were sitting there next to the woods with their lights off, getting ready to jacklight the field for deer.”

“And when a car came zipping along, they probably thought it’d be a hoot to jacklight the driver.”

They could all picture it in their minds. The seemingly deserted road, the girl talking on her cell phone, angry at her brother, oblivious to any dark truck parked next to dark trees. Then suddenly a blinding light, that seemed to come from out of nowhere and at such an odd angle that she must have thought it was in her lane. No wonder Matt had been so shaken up when word came that Mallory had died. No wonder he’d skipped school Friday and gone out to talk with Jason.

“So the Wentworths killed Mallory, but then who killed the Wentworths?” said Dwight.

Even as he said it, he had a sinking suspicion that he knew. “Sorry, Richards,” he said, “but I need you to check the gun records. See if Malcolm Johnson ever applied for a permit for a thirty-two. And find out what kind of car he’s driving these days. Denning, hop upstairs and see if there’s a judge still around to sign us a search warrant. I don’t know how the hell he knew the Wentworths were there, but—”

“I know,” said a voice behind him.

Dwight turned and saw Deborah standing there, white-faced.

CHAPTER 30

“—I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h--l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and that’s when I’ll get him.”

—“A Chaparral Christmas Gift,” O. Henry

Lunch with Reid was as informative as I had hoped. I had a name now to go with a conversation I’d had back in June, but I still didn’t know what it could mean until I remembered Saturday morning and how irate Isabel had been when she realized that Jane Ann’s college friends had dropped her off at my house to bake cookies rather than taking her straight home.

Once again, Isabel was my go-to person, only this time, by the time we finished talking, she realized what I was asking. “Oh, Lord, honey. You gonna tell Dwight?”

“I think I have to, Isabel. Don’t you?”

* * *

Now I stood in the doorway of the detective squad room. I had heard enough to realize that the Wentworth boys had blinded Mallory with that flashlight and that Dwight and his deputies now suspected Malcolm of gunning them down on Friday morning.

I heard Dwight say, “I don’t know how the hell he knew the Wentworths were there, but—”

“I know,” I said quietly.

“Deb’rah?”

“Jessica said she’d heard that Malcolm was so torn up and half mad with grief that he was out walking that road the next morning, trying to figure out why Mallory swerved. He was probably looking for a dead dog or something. Instead he found fresh chicken bones and probably a piece of junk mail with Jason Wentworth’s name on it. I can’t swear he was in my courtroom the day I confiscated Wentworth’s rifle and hunting license for jacklighting deer, but I can’t swear he wasn’t. Doesn’t matter, though. The Clarion ran his name when they did that article about illegal hunting practices last fall, remember? Malcolm would have jumped to the same conclusions y’all did in a heartbeat.”

I turned to Deputy Denning. “If you can’t find another judge upstairs, I’ll sign a search warrant for that bastard’s house.”

Dwight frowned at me.

“Sorry,” I said, realizing a little late that I probably ought not to go blabbing the rest of my suspicions to the world. “All the same, I will sign one if all the others have left for the holiday.”

I let Dwight lead me into his office and close the door.

“What’s all this about, Deb’rah?”

“Charlie Barefoot thinks Malcolm killed Jeff. I do, too.”

“What?”

“And right now, Isabel probably does, too.”

“Isabel? How did the hell did Isabel get into this?”

“Last summer,” I said. “Wrightsville Beach. Our summer conference?”

He smiled, remembering the Jacuzzi in my hotel room. “Yeah?”

“I told you that the trial lawyers were having their conference, too. Remember? I had a drink with Reid and some of his colleagues that first night before I found one of my colleagues floating in the river?”

“So?”

“There was an attorney at the table that they called Gallie. Not a high school student, Dwight. Someone out of Malcolm’s past. I had lunch with Reid just now and he says the guy’s real name is Paul Gallagher. He married a girl from Asheville and has been in practice out there ever since he graduated from law school. He’s originally from Fuquay, though, and when he heard that I was from outside Cotton Grove, he asked me if I knew various people. Malcolm Johnson was one of several he mentioned. He said he and Malcolm used to room next door to each other at Carolina and hadn’t seen each other in years till he ran into Malcolm and his son in Raleigh last spring. He said the son wanted to hear all about what Malcolm was like when they were in college.”

Dwight still didn’t get it. “What’s that got to do with Jeff Barefoot? Or Isabel, for that matter.”

“Gallagher said he was poor as Job’s turkey back then. Didn’t have a car and Malcolm often gave him a ride home since Fuquay’s right on the way to Cotton Grove. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions without a net,” I said, “but I think you ought to look up the records, see if there was much of an investigation when Jeff Barefoot fell off his roof that night and supposedly hit his head on a rock. See if that’s the same day the kids would be getting home from Carolina. Fuquay’s only twenty minutes from Cotton Grove. If he says Malcolm dropped him off around six, why did it take Malcolm two hours to get home?”

Exasperated, Dwight said, “Now how the hell do you know it took him two hours?”

“I called Isabel. That woman doesn’t forget a thing.”

When my sister-in-law answered the phone an hour earlier, I had asked her if she remembered telling me how Malcolm and Sarah had married.

“Oh, honey, yes,” she’d said. “I can’t stop grieving for them. Especially poor Sarah, losing her daughter right here at Christmas just like she lost her first husband. It was a blessing for her to have another fine man wanting her, but it sure did hurt Jeff’s mama. I told you about that.”

“Yes. That she was bitter because Malcolm got Jeff’s wife and Jeff’s son and Jeff’s life.” Hesitantly, I had asked Isabel, “I don’t suppose anybody asked where Malcolm was when Jeff fell off the roof?”

“Now, you know something? That’s exactly what Jeff’s mama wanted to know when Sarah was fixing to get married again. She just couldn’t believe that Jeff would fall off his own roof when he’d been up and down so many roofs his whole life.”

“She thought Mal had something to do with it?”

“No, not really. That was the grief talking. Like I said, Jeff and Mal stayed real good friends. Only time they had a cross word was when Jeff and Sarah eloped to South Carolina. He thought Jeff should’ve told him so he could be the best man.”

“So where was he, Isabel?”

“Driving home from Chapel Hill for Christmas. I heard he hadn’t been in the house a half hour till somebody called him about Jeff’s fall. His mother was so provoked. She’d made a dinner party ’specially so Malcolm could meet the daughter of some fancy-pants businessman in Raleigh. They were supposed to eat at seven-thirty, but he didn’t get home till almost eight, and even then, soon as he got that phone call, he left and went right over to Jeff’s house. He was so tore up about it, he even finished stringing up the lights and threw the rock into the gully out back of the house so Sarah wouldn’t have to see it.”

“Now wasn’t that real thoughtful of him?” I had said.

At that point, Isabel had caught her breath. “When you say it like that, honey… you don’t really think—? Do you?”

“And then he married her eight months later.”

“Oh, Lord, honey,” she had said. “You gonna tell Dwight?”

When I finished repeating that conversation to Dwight, I said, “Don’t you think Jeff’s mother might have hinted at something like that to Charlie when he and Malcolm started having problems? Then Charlie met Gallagher last spring and right after that he changed his name. You don’t think the two events are related?”

“That’s an awfully big jump, shug,” Dwight said. “You don’t know that Jeff died the same evening this Gallagher person hitched a ride. Or that it was even the same Christmas.”

Even while he was throwing up reasonable objections, I could see his mind working.

“Malcolm always did go after whatever he wanted, but this? I don’t know, Deb’rah.”

Denning and Richards returned almost together. Denning had caught Judge Longmire on his way out the door. He agreed to hang around a few minutes longer if it turned out that Malcolm Johnson really did own a .32.

“He does,” said Richards. “Bought it eight years ago. What you want to bet that he’s the one that smashed Faison’s flashlight?”

“Get me a warrant form,” Dwight told her.

He turned to me with a what-can-I-tell-you look on his face.

I fixed him with a stern eye. “It’s not even two o’clock yet. If y’all can’t find that gun and book him in three hours, you’re not much of a detective. Besides, it’s your family. Six o’clock, mister.”

CHAPTER 31

… but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

—A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 24

Hope you know what you’re doing, Bryant,” said chief district court judge F. Roger Longmire when he signed the search warrant fifteen minutes later. “His daddy’s got a lot of influence up in that end of the county.”

“I know,” Dwight said. In addition to Richards and Denning, he had pulled McLamb off his search for more Wentworth enemies and radioed a couple of patrol cars to rendezvous with them a mile from the Johnson home.

“Maybe I’ll ride along with you,” said Sheriff Poole when Dwight briefed him on the situation. “If it goes down like you think, I’ll bring him back to Dobbs, see he gets his lawyer, and you can just go on home to Deborah and your boy.”

Bo almost never talked about his late wife, but something in his voice told Dwight that he still missed Marnie pretty badly and that Christmas was making it worse.

“Why don’t you come have Christmas with us at Mr. Kezzie’s tomorrow?” he said as they neared Cotton Grove. “You know there’s always room for another pair of legs under his table.”

“Aw now, I couldn’t do that,” Bo said. “Could I?”

“Sure you can. You just have to promise not to ask what the fruitcake’s been aged in.”

The sheriff chuckled. “Well, if you’re sure…?”

“I’m sure. Bring along your banjo, though. With the Knotts, you have to sing for your supper.”

When the small cavalcade of official vehicles pulled into the circular drive, Malcolm Johnson was outside on this mild winter day with a pair of branch loppers, cutting out some broken limbs from the dogwoods scattered across the front. Twigs and branches were piled in his garden cart. The middle garage door was up and they could see a white late-model Toyota inside.

“What’s happening, Dwight?” he called when his old teammate stepped down from his truck and Denning moved toward the garage with his video camera. Upon seeing the smaller man who emerged from the other side of the truck, he frowned. “Sheriff Poole?”

Although he and Dwight were the same age, Johnson’s hair had a little more gray and his Carolina sweatshirt and black chinos hung loosely on his tall frame as if he had recently lost weight.

“Sorry to do this, Malcolm,” Dwight said, “but we have a warrant to search your premises for a handgun. Also to impound your car if it has a dent on the left rear fender.”

“My gun?”

“The thirty-two you bought eight years ago.”

“Malcolm?” Sarah Johnson had appeared in the front doorway and looked out at them with troubled eyes.

“It’s okay, honey. Stay there.”

But she stepped out onto the porch. “Dwight? What’s going on?”

“Sarah, please,” Malcolm said, his voice anguished.

“Is it about Mallory? Did you find out who spiked her Coke?”

“I’m sorry,” Dwight said again. “We’re not here about that, Sarah. We’re here to get Malcolm’s gun.”

“His gun? But why?” She turned to her husband. “Malcolm, why do they want your gun?”

He held out his arm to her, but when she kept her distance, he dropped it as if in surrender.

“They think I shot the guys that killed Mallory. That is why y’all’re here, right, Dwight? You want to see if the bullets you found in those bastards came from my gun? Well, so what? They got what they deserved and—”

“Now hold on here a minute,” said the sheriff, stepping forward and waving his hand to silence Malcolm Johnson. “We’ve not asked you any questions and you might want to stop right there, son, and think if you want your lawyer here before you say anything else.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Sheriff. Sarah, honey, go call Pete Taylor and tell him—” He glanced at Dwight and Bo. “I guess I ought to tell him to meet us at the jail?”

Bo nodded.

“Better call my dad, too.”

“For God’s sake, Malcolm! What have you done?”

“Don’t worry about it, Sarah. Everything’s going to be all right. Just go call Pete and Dad, okay?”

Pale-faced, she went inside to do as he’d asked.

When she was gone, Johnson turned to them with urgency. “Please. This is going to be rough on her, coming on top of Mallory and all this mess with Charlie. Try not to upset her any more than you have to, okay? There’s no need to tear our house apart. The gun’s upstairs in our bedroom, in the nightstand on the left side of the bed.”

Dwight nodded to Richards, and as she entered the house, Denning walked up the drive from the garage. “There’s a scrape mark in the right place, Major, and it looks like the Higgins car left a little silver paint on that fender.”

Malcolm Johnson heard those words as if it were nothing to do with him. Well, the man did sell insurance, thought Dwight. He must have calculated the odds already. A father temporarily deranged by grief? Who guns down the men who probably were responsible for his daughter’s death? With all the evidence they had—and they would no doubt find more before it came to trial—a jury would have to find him guilty, but his attorney would have argued their incompetent DA down to the lowest possible charges. Malcolm might get a little prison time, but by the time his case wound through the courts, he stood a good chance of winding up on probation with a suspended sentence. And few people in his circle would shun him for his act or think less of him.

On the other hand, if he’d murdered for another man’s wife as Deborah and Isabel and Charlie Barefoot thought? The Barefoots might be blue-collar, but they were as well respected in Cotton Grove as Shelton Johnson and his two sons. Probably better liked, too. To learn that Malcolm had killed Jeff to get Sarah? No, that was not something people would easily overlook. Nor Sarah either, he suspected.

“We know about your friend Gallie,” he told Malcolm. “Or should I say Gallagher?”

It was a direct hit. The blood drained from Malcolm’s face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember the guy who hitched a ride home with you the Christmas that Jeff died?”

Malcolm’s eyes darted toward the front door. “You’re not going to say anything like that to her, are you?”

“Why not?” said Bo, stepping in to get a closer look at the fear on Malcolm’s face. “If she’s involved, she’s gonna need a lawyer, too, won’t she?”

“Involved? You think Sarah—? For the love of God, Dwight! You used to be my friend. We trusted each other out there on the court. Please, man, don’t say anything to her about Gallie. I couldn’t bear it if she—Listen, I’ll confess to the shooting. I’ll make a statement right now. Is it a deal?”

“No deals,” Dwight said. “But we don’t have to say anything about that other matter now.”

Malcolm let out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you.”

Richards came down the front steps with the handgun inside a plastic bag. “Smells like it was recently fired, Major.”

She was followed by Sarah Johnson, whose dark eyes seemed to have sunk even deeper into her skull. “Your dad’s on his way over. Pete said he’d meet you in Dobbs.”

“Thanks, darling. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise you. I’ll be home as soon as Pete can sort this out.” He gave a rueful laugh and looked at Bo. “Am I under arrest yet, Sheriff? Or can I change clothes and wash up?”

“No need to change,” Bo said mildly.

“I’m coming with you,” said Sarah.

He smiled down at her and drew her thin body close to his. “Thanks, honey. Just let me wash up and get my wallet, Sheriff.”

Dwight glanced at Bo, who shrugged. While it was most unlikely that Malcolm Johnson would try to run, the house did back up on thick woods and probably had several rear exits. Better to forestall that possibility than risk having to stage a manhunt, thought Dwight, and he signaled for McLamb to follow their suspect into the house.

Bo patted his chief deputy on the shoulder and shook his head in wonderment at Mayleen Richards, who was standing there, too. “Well, Dwight, I said I wanted the Wentworth killings wrapped up by Christmas and damned if you didn’t do it. Sure didn’t expect it to come out like this, though.”

“Me either, Bo.”

“You got any hard evidence in that other matter?”

“Nope. And after all this time, I doubt there is any. His mother’s dead and Shelton Johnson’s sure as hell not gonna remember anything about a dinner party that would cast suspicion on his son. We can question this Gallagher man, see just how much he actually did tell Charlie. As for Charlie, it’ll depend on which he wants more: revenge for his real father’s death or to spare his mother any more hurt.”

“Don’t forget his password,” Mayleen Richards said.

Bo Poole looked puzzled. “His password?”

“For his phone,” she told him. “Avenger.”

Bo gave a sour laugh, then rocked back on his heels. “Mayleen and me, we can take it from here, Dwight. You might as well go on home and enjoy your Christmas.”

“You sure?”

“You know good as me that this is just the opening round. Shelton Johnson will post his boy’s bond and he’ll be back home before dark.”

“You’ve got my cell number if anything comes up,” Dwight said, then, wishing them all a merry Christmas, he got in his truck and headed for the farm. Not even four o’clock yet, and because he would be practically passing it on his way through town, he swung by the Wentworth house.

As he reached the door, Mrs. Wentworth opened it and was even more startled than he to see someone standing there.

“Major Bryant!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t get a chance to ring it yet.”

“I was just coming out to turn on my lights,” she said and reached down to plug a tangle of cords into the multi-outlet socket beside the door. Immediately the near bushes twinkled with colorful lights. “Was there something I can do for you?”

“No, ma’am. I just stopped by to say that we’ve arrested the man who shot your stepsons. I can’t give you any names or details yet, but I thought you’d like to know that.”

“Did he say why he did it?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. It’ll come out, but I can’t talk about it right now.”

“Well, I guess that’s something anyhow. Thank you, Major.”

Dwight had started to turn away when she said, “Did you see it?”

“See what, ma’am?”

“I went ahead and opened the present Matt put under the tree for me. But it wasn’t just from him. Jason signed the card, too.”

She pointed to a small grotto she had constructed between two of the foundation bushes. The grotto was framed with several strands of clear lights and there in the center stood the small concrete Jesus that had been stolen from the Welcome Home store, his hand raised in blessing.

Mrs. Wentworth looked at him with a sad smile. “I guess Jason finally realized that I loved him, too.”

Although the Johnson house and grounds looked imposing from outside, inside the house felt like a real home, spacious and soundly constructed. No expenses spared, thought Raeford McLamb as he trailed the couple upstairs, keeping a discreet distance. No hollow-core doors here. They were thick solid wood, the ceilings were at least nine feet high with crown molding, and he detected not the slightest wobble in the curved banister.

When they reached the master bedroom, which was carpeted in a thick moss green that echoed the custom-made quilted spread on the king-size bed, he hung back in the doorway to give husband and wife a semblance of privacy. French doors opened onto a wide balcony with wrought iron railings that mimicked vines and leaves. Tall oaks and maples would shade the balcony in summer, but winter’s late afternoon sunlight filtered through their leafless branches now.

At the near end of the large room sat an overstuffed couch and a comfortable-looking lounge chair. Low bookcases held framed family photographs and McLamb immediately spotted a picture of Mallory in her homecoming queen gown and tiara. In another, she and her mother sat on a white wicker loveseat while her father and brother stood behind.

Despite the sheriff’s telling him he needn’t change, Malcolm Johnson took off his Carolina sweatshirt and pulled a dark blue crewneck sweater over his head.

“You married, Deputy?” he asked, as his head emerged from the sweater.

“Yessir.”

“Children?”

“Two. A boy and a girl.”

“They all excited about Santa Claus?”

McLamb nodded. “We don’t have a fireplace and they keep trying to figure out where’s the best place to hang their stockings. I think they’re gonna make me put up hooks beside the tree.”

Johnson paused in the doorway of the bathroom. “How long you been married?”

“Eight years now.”

The older man glanced at his wife, who was folding up the discarded blue sweatshirt. “Going on twenty for us.” He caught her hand. “And except for this week, it hasn’t been a bad twenty, has it, honey?”

She smiled and he squeezed her shoulder, then walked into the bathroom.

“Leave the door open,” said McLamb and moved over to the doorway, where he could keep the man in full view.

The bathroom was as lavish as everything else he had seen in this house: marble slabs on the floor and counter, a large walk-in shower with the toilet hidden in an alcove at the rear. A frosted glass window probably opened onto the balcony, but there did not seem to be any other exits. Nevertheless, he watched as Johnson squirted toothpaste on the brush and turned on the water.

The years of being a gracious hostess seemed to kick in as Sarah Johnson smoothed the wrinkles from the quilted spread. “How old are your children? Do you have pictures?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and with one eye on Johnson’s back, he pulled out his wallet to show her the photo taken last week of both his children seated on Santa’s broad lap. “This one’s Rosy and that little guy is Jordo.”

“Such a sweet age,” she said. “I hope you’re enjoying them.”

He put his wallet back in his pocket. “We do, ma’am.”

“They grow up so fast. They’ll be gone in a blink of the eye.”

At that her own eyes filled and McLamb glanced to the bathroom. Johnson had filled the basin with water and was bending over to wash his face when suddenly the sink and counter and tiled floor was splashed with red and Johnson slumped to the floor, a razor blade in his hand. Blood pumped from a deep gash on the side of his neck.

“Oh, shit!” McLamb cried and darted into the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and tried to apply pressure to the base of Johnson’s neck.

Sarah Johnson was screaming and she crouched beside her husband as his blood soaked her hands and shirt.

With eyes wide open, he tried to reach for her. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I loved you so much… so…”

The blood stopped spurting and a moment later he was gone.

CHAPTER 32

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

—“A Visit from St. Nicholas,” Clement Clarke Moore

To my complete and utter surprise, Dwight drove into the yard around four-thirty as Cal, Bandit, and I were coming back from the woods with a basket of holly, cedar, and pine so that I could make a fresh centerpiece for the dining table.

Cal gave his dad a wave and went on into the house to take a shower.

Instead of getting out of the truck immediately, Dwight gave me a wait-a-minute gesture and opened the door, with the phone still to his ear. When he finally did emerge, his face was grim.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“That was Bo. Malcolm Johnson’s killed himself.”

“Oh, Dwight.” Even though I was sure he had killed at least three young men, the news was still shocking. “How? Why?”

“We went out to arrest him just now. When I left, he was on his way in to wash up and get his wallet. Bo thinks he palmed a razor blade when he opened the bathroom cabinet to get his toothpaste, and even though McLamb and Sarah were standing right there by the open door, he cut his jugular before they realized what he was doing. He practically begged us not to mention Gallagher in front of Sarah. I guess he couldn’t stand to see her learn that he’d killed Jeff.”

“Poor Sarah.” I sighed. “Do you have to go back?”

“No, Bo says he’ll take care of it.”

“You want me to call Kate and say we can’t come?”

“No.” He took a deep breath as if to shake it off and reached for my hand. “Let’s walk down to the pond and take another look at that damn fountain.”

We walked and talked for a good forty minutes, and yes, that silly fountain finally did make us smile again when we turned it on.

We agreed that we wouldn’t mention the murders or Malcolm’s death at the party tonight. No need to cast a pall for the others. And once we had loaded our presents for Dwight’s family in the trunk of the car and headed out into the cool evening, Cal’s excitement and high good spirits kept us from dwelling on it.

Kate’s first husband, Jake Honeycutt, had inherited a house that had been in his family for well over a hundred years. Initially built as a four-over-four wooden farmhouse, the passage of time and the family’s increasing prosperity had brought extensive remodels and renovations that added porches and ells and a long single-floor addition on the back until it was difficult to see the original lines of the house.

Inside, all was warmth, red velvet ribbons, glowing candles, and traditional decorations that would have made Scrooge’s nephew feel right at home. A wide central hall ran the length of the original house and the staircase that curved up to the second-floor landing had a thick evergreen garland twined in and out of the railings. (“Fake cedar,” Dwight murmured in my ear, although it looked so real, he had to touch it to be certain. “Don’t be a snob,” I murmured back.)

Both the front and back parlors had pocket doors that could be opened to form a large space. The front parlor was the living room with two large couches and several lounge chairs. After Jake’s death, Kate had turned the back parlor into a formal dining room.

We were the last to arrive and barely had time to drink a festive cup of nonalcoholic eggnog before Bessie Stewart, Miss Emily’s housekeeper who helps out in the kitchen on occasions like this, called us to the table.

Not counting R.W., who sat at a corner in his high chair, fourteen of us sat down to an early dinner. Kate had put all the leaves in the table so that the children wouldn’t have to be shunted off to the kitchen.

Dwight’s sister Beth and her family had gone to spend the holidays with his people down in South Carolina, but Nancy Faye and her husband James and their three stair steps who range in age from six to ten were there, as was Miss Emily.

When we first arrived, I did not immediately recognize the elderly woman who now sat between Rob and little Jake until Kate said, “You remember Mrs. Lattimore, don’t you, Deborah? Jake’s great-aunt?”

“Of course,” I said, taking her thin hand in mine. “How nice to see you again.”

“You’re Susan Stephenson’s daughter, are you not?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, instantly reverting to my childhood when I had been slightly afraid of this tall, autocratic woman.

“You’re the judge?”

I nodded.

Widowed when she was in her early forties, Jane Lattimore had never remarried, but lived on alone in a huge Queen Anne house near the center of Cotton Grove. Built when houses of that size occupied half a block, it had a wrought iron fence all around the property and a life-size iron deer stood on the side where her grandchildren, who were all slightly older than me, used to play croquet and badminton when they came to visit her. I think she had three or four children, who scattered to the far reaches of the country soon after finishing school, but she continued to live alone in that big house except for a housekeeper and a widowed cousin. Her youngest child was Anne Harald, a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist, who lived in New York and occasionally had shows of her photographs at a gallery in Raleigh.

Last year, when I was trying to sort it all out, Kate had patiently sat me down with a family tree she had drawn up for Mary Pat. Kate’s cousin Philip, a wealthy venture capitalist, had married Jake’s cousin Patricia, who was much younger, and both had died before Mary Pat was three.

She then showed me that Jake’s grandfather and Mrs. Lattimore had been brother and sister, which made Mrs. Lattimore his great-aunt and her children his cousins. I’m pretty good with family trees, but my head was spinning when she finished. Nevertheless, it did help me understand how Kate wound up with a rather valuable painting. Before his death, Jake had been fairly close to Mrs. Lattimore’s granddaughter, a homicide detective with the NYPD until she inherited a fortune from the artist Oscar Nauman, who had been her lover when he died. She had given Kate one of his works when little Jake was born and it hung in the front parlor. The painting didn’t really go with the antique furniture, but the colors were nice.

Mrs. Lattimore has always been a very large fish in small-pond Cotton Grove. She’s sat on just about every board the town has, but her abiding love is for the school system, and it was thanks to her efforts that shabby old Zachary Taylor High was torn down and replaced with modern West Colleton. Even though Jake is dead and Kate is no blood kin, Kate still keeps a watchful eye on his great-aunt and often invites her to dinner. This was the first time I had laid eyes on her in over six months and I was shocked to see how fragile she now seemed. Once or twice during dinner, I saw Kate’s lively face look with concern at her son’s great-great-aunt; and when we moved back into the front parlor after dinner, I pulled Kate aside to ask if Mrs. Lattimore was ill.

“I’m afraid so, but she won’t admit it. She’s ninety-one and she says she’s not going to spend her last few months in chemo with a bald head. Worse, she’s made me promise not to say anything to Anne or Sigrid, but I don’t know, Deborah. Maybe when you—” She clapped her hand over her mouth like a guilty child.

“Maybe when I what?” I said.

She grinned. “Never mind. You’ll soon find out.” Then raising her voice, she said, “Okay, everybody. Who’s ready to open presents?”

“Me,” cried Nancy Faye’s daughter Jean.

“Me, too!” Cal and Mary Pat sang out at the same time, which made them dissolve in giggles.

Soon the living room floor was awash in torn Christmas paper and discarded ribbons and bows.

There were the usual sweaters and scarves for the adults and toys and books for the children, but what blew me away was the gift that Kate and Rob gave us.

Elaborately wrapped in a small gold box was what looked like two brass house keys.

Puzzled, I said, “What do they unlock?”

“My New York apartment,” said Kate with a happy smile. “You guys never got a honeymoon and you’ve never been to New York together. The apartment’s going to be empty for most of January because my tenant’s going to Italy then, so I asked if you could housesit for part of the time.”

“Really?” I looked at Dwight. “Can we do this?”

“Well,” he said as a slow smile spread over his face, “I’ve got a lot of vacation time coming and you haven’t taken off much this year.”

“Here,” said Miss Emily, handing Dwight an envelope. “This goes with it.”

Inside were tickets to a Broadway show that was getting good reviews. I hadn’t spent much time in New York since shortly after Mother died when I ran away from home and did some stupid things. Suddenly my head was filled with images of the city: the crowded streets, the delicious-smelling delis, the small funky clubs, the graffiti, the library where I first met—Well. Never mind that particular image.

“Oh, golly, Kate!” I jumped up to give her a hug. “And all we got you was a sweater.”

“Which I love,” she assured me.

By nine o’clock, all the presents had been opened and the little ones were yawning. As Dwight and Cal were taking some of the gifts we’d received out to the car, Mrs. Lattimore pulled me aside and thrust into my hands a small heavy package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “I’ve been so worried about what to do about this,” she said. “When Kate told me she was going to lend you and Dwight her apartment, I knew this was the answer. I can’t trust it to the mails and Dwight is a police officer, isn’t he?”

“Excuse me?” I said, bewildered by both the package and her words.

With a hint of her old imperiousness, she lifted her chin and fixed me with her crystalline gray eyes. “Please take this to my daughter Anne in New York. She’ll know what to do with it.”

Before I could protest, she turned back into the room and called for her coat.

“I’m ready to go now,” she said, and Rob, who was to drive her home, immediately escorted her down the steps.

There was nothing else to do but to slide the package into a shopping bag with some of Cal’s toys and grab my own coat.

Once home, Cal announced that he was going straight to bed so that Christmas morning would come sooner. With a self-conscious grin, he hung his stocking on a hook over the fireplace and went and got into his pajamas. Dwight and I tucked him in and Dwight said, “Sleep tight, buddy. Sure hope Santa leaves you something besides switches and coal.”

“Not funny, Dad,” he said with a big yawn.

Because we had to wait till he was asleep to help Santa come, I went and put on my own pajamas.

When I came back out, Dwight was sitting on the floor watching his train circle the tree, its small headlight shining and an occasional low tooot-tooot of its whistle.

I sat down on the floor beside him. “That’s a pretty amazing gift from Kate and Rob.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“You do want to go, don’t you?”

“A week in New York? With you? Of course I do. It’s such a great city.”

I was surprised. “You sound like you know it pretty well. I didn’t realize.”

“Guess I never talked much about it. After Jonna and I split up and she left D.C. to move back to Virginia, I used to take the train up to New York two or three times a month. Hey, why don’t we do that, too?”

“Do what?”

“Take the train instead of flying.”

“I’ve never been on a train,” I said.

Now it was his turn to be surprised. “In that case, then, maybe we should splurge and get a compartment.” He gave me an exaggerated leer. “Get an early start on our honeymoon.”

I leered right back at him. “You saying there are even more things I don’t know about you?”

He laughed, then we both lapsed into silence until he sighed and blew the whistle.

I touched his hand. “There’s something so sad and mournful about that sound, isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” he said and I knew he was thinking about this past week, too. The Wentworth boys lying dead while ice rained down on them. Sarah and Malcolm standing beside Mallory’s coffin. Malcolm’s suicide.

But life, of course, does move on. Dwight stood up and pulled me to my feet.

“Guess we’d better get started,” he said and went down the hall to make sure Cal was asleep before we began bringing in his gifts.

When Dwight came back a few minutes later, he was smiling.

“Asleep?” I asked.

He nodded. “But it’s the damnedest thing.”

“What is?”

“There’s like a bunch of little shiny things right over his head.”

“What?”

He nodded solemnly. “I don’t know, Deb’rah. Maybe I’m wrong, but they look just like dancing sugarplums.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My heartfelt thanks to retired district court judge Shelley Desvousges and to Karen Scott for setting me straight on certain legal technicalities; to Dana Mochel for a funny incident; to Brynn Bonner Witchger for excellent suggestions; to Luci Hansson Zahray, the mystery world’s “Poison Lady”; and, as always, to Rebecca Blackmore, Shelly Holt, and John Smith, who have given indispensable help almost from the very beginning of Deborah Knott’s career. I truly could not have written these books without them.

And finally, my long-overdue thanks to Les Pockell and Celia Johnson, who have done as much as any two editors possibly could to fill the void left by Sara Ann Freed.

Table of Contents

FRONT COVER IMAGE

WELCOME

DEDICATION

DEBORAH KNOTT’S FAMILY TREE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Deborah Knott Novels

Deborah Knott novels:

CHRISTMAS MOURNING

SAND SHARKS

DEATH’S HALF ACRE

HARD ROW

WINTER’S CHILD

RITUALS OF THE SEASON

HIGH COUNTRY FALL

SLOW DOLLAR

UNCOMMON CLAY

STORM TRACK

HOME FIRES

KILLER MARKET

UP JUMPS THE DEVIL

SHOOTING AT LOONS

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT

BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER

Sigrid Harald novels:

FUGITIVE COLORS

PAST IMPERFECT

CORPUS CHRISTMAS

BABY DOLL GAMES

THE RIGHT JACK

DEATH IN BLUE FOLDERS

DEATH OF A BUTTERFLY

ONE COFFEE WITH

Non-series:

LAST LESSONS OF SUMMER

BLOODY KIN

SUITABLE FOR HANGING

SHOVELING SMOKE

CHRISTMAS MOURNING

MARGARET MARON

NEW YORK BOSTON

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: November 2010

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ISBN: 978-0-446-57404-4